Sue Fairhead's Blog, page 44

Mum and Dad (by Joanna Trollope)

I’ve enjoyed almost all the novels I’ve read by Joanna Trollope over the past couple of decades, so when I learned that she had a new book published last year, I put it on my wishlist as soon as it was available in paperback, and was given it for Christmas. It’s sat on my to-be-read shelf for nearly nine months, but I finally picked it up to read a few days ago.

Trollope’s novels are usually character-based, many of them revolving around families, dysfunctional or otherwise. This is no excep...

Looking Forward (by Marcia Willett)

‘Looking Forward’ is the first book I ever read by Marcia Willett, over twenty years ago (before I started this blog). I found it in a thrift store, at a time when we didn’t have many books, and thought it looked like my kind of novel. I was right - I was instantly involved in the storyline, and when I had finished, I put the two sequels on my wishlist.

I re-read this book back in 2007, so it was well overdue for another re-read. And while I recalled the outline of the plot, particularly the...

The Secret of the Gorge (by Malcolm Saville)

I’m enjoying my slow re-read of Malcolm Saville’s ‘Lone Pine’ series of adventure stories intended for teenagers. I first came across these books in my early teens, when I discovered a few hardbacks on my grandmother’s shelves. Within the next few years, they were available in Armada paperback, inexpensively, and I gradually acquired the whole series.  But I was never all that keen on the middle books. So in my last read through, over ten years ago, I missed out several of them including ‘T...

Looking Good, Being Bad (by Adrian Plass)

I first read Adrian Plass’s book ‘Looking Good, Being Bad’ back in 2009. It was definitely time for a re-read, but I couldn’t find my copy. I must have lent it to someone years ago, but have no record of whom. So I turned to the AwesomeBooks site, and found an inexpensive edition in the ‘Bargain Bin’. That arrived a few months ago, and I’ve just finished re-reading the book. 

Adrian Plass is one of my favourite modern Christian writers. He has a readable, enjoyable style, often including gen...

A Place Called Winter (by Patrick Gale)

I’ve only previously read one book by Patrick Gale - ‘The Whole Day Through’ - and while I quite liked it, it didn’t inspire me to look for any more of his books. But our reading group had allocated ‘A Place Called Winter’ for this month’s read, so I was quite looking forward to it.

It starts well, if rather dramatically. Harry - who is the viewpoint character throughout - describes in some detail a rather archaic ‘treatment’ for unspecified crimes in a psychiatric hospital. We learn later t...

The Last Continent (by Terry Pratchett)

‘The Last Continent’, 22nd in the late Sir Terry Pratchett’s lengthy Discworld series, was published in 1998. We have the hardback edition, so must have acquired it soon after publication; possibly I read it aloud to my sons, or we might have read it separately. In any case, it was before I started this blog in the spring of 1999, and I haven’t read it since then.  So it’s not surprising that my memory of it was almost non-existent. 

I did recall that the continent of the title, Fourecks (or...

Mr Galliano's Circus (by Enid Blyton)

I had an hour free on a Sunday morning, and decided to read something ultra-light and frivolous. A young friend has recently been reading her way through my extensive Enid Blyton collection, and I had been thinking for a while that I could discuss them more intelligently with her if I re-read some of them myself. One of my childhood favourites was ‘Mr Galliano’s Circus’, so that’s the one I chose. I hadn’t remembered that I last read it as recently as 2005. 

Jimmy is the main character in th...

A Weekend with Mr Darcy (by Victoria Connelly)

I don’t think I had ever read anything by Victoria Connelly, although her books have sometimes been recommended to me on Amazon. So when I saw her novel ‘A Weekend with Mr Darcy’ at a church book sale a couple of years ago, I decided to shell out fifty cents to buy it. I quite liked the cover, and since I like Jane Austen it looked like an appealing book. However, I have a lot of unread books, and re-read many more, so it took me nearly two years to decide to read it. 

It’s a light-weight bu...

Not a Drop to Drink (by Patsy Collins)

I had finished one book on my Kindle, read/skimmed another one, and wanted something fairly short to read for the last hour or so of the flight. It was clear from my lengthy list of downloaded books that the short story collection ‘Not a Drop to Drink’ was not very long; and an advantage of short stories is that it’s easy to stop reading at the end of any of them. I knew of Patsy Collins from some online forums, and had acquired this volume which was offered free as a taster to her extensiv...

Bit Literacy (by Mark Hurst)

From time to time I browse Kindle books that are available for free download, and acquire them. However it’s often many months, sometimes years before I actually read them. One such book is ‘Bit Literacy’, which Amazon tells me I downloaded in April 2011.  I had not heard of the author, Mark Hurst, and it’s only in my recent travels that the title intrigued me, and I read the whole book on a flight.

That is to say, I read the introduction and the first couple of chapters in full. After that,...